One of the things on my list before school was to sort through the boxes of music in the church balcony. The previous music director boxed up the entire choral music library of the church intending to donate it, but he donation never happened. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.
There are maybe 130 boxes. After working all day yesterday, I got through 20. I’m pulling out all the handbell music I find, and also any music for smaller groups or kids. If I ever get an SATB choir up and running at my church, it will be a ways down the road, so I don’t think I’m keeping any of that… unless I see something sentimental to me 🙂
In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out what to do with an entire choral music library. I don’t want to just put this all in the recycle bin. Yikes.
Here’s something interesting though. I did meet the previous music director, but he was so sick by then, I didn’t really get to know him. But as I’ve looked through his library of books, and now started to go through the music he ordered, I’m learning about him. His music taste was similar to mine, as was his interest in worship and liturgy.
As I saw the shape and size of the music program he built, I was thinking that if I had stayed at the first church I ever worked at and spent my whole career there, I might have been a lot like him, with active music groups, and music compositions, and research about worship and music. Instead, I’ve moved around, and become sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I love music, but I’ve learned to love other things as well, and so I divide my attention. I admire his focus.
I think about that often too: what if we had not moved around so much. I think both longevity and variety provide a richness (of experiences, of friends, of skills) though in very different ways.
Well, that seems to have turned into a very introspective task. You are Gretchen are both very wise.
I wonder if there is somewhere that you could advertise and have someone collect the unwanted pieces? Then if you’ve given it your best shot, you could let them go.
Would this collection be the sort of thing one would post in The Lutheran Witness under “Available” near the back? (You know what I mean, right?)
I know what you mean about not wanting to just recycle everything. Over the decades I have amassed a TON of craft/cross-stitch supplies and, while I know I’d have to work on them for 20 years after I died, the thought of just throwing it all away makes my tummy flip over. Praying you can find everything a good home in time.